Re: Scripting Better Applescript support requests !
Re: Scripting Better Applescript support requests !
- Subject: Re: Scripting Better Applescript support requests !
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2017 23:55:49 +0000
Christopher Stone wrote:
How about if everyone in the world who automates Macs writes Tim Cook
a legitimate praise, complaint, and suggestion letter – and sends it
at the same time on the same day.
Adam C Engst already collected a hundred user stories eight weeks ago
which he'll have already sent to Apple.
Question: what good do you think a hundred letters will do? Or five
thousand? Tim Cook's job today is to serve and grow Apple's
HALF-BILLION-USER iOS market. Mac Automation doesn't even exist in that
world, never mind demonstrate how it could be relevant.
I think Apple hasn't been given enough credit for ASObjC, JXA, Libraries, and suchlike.
Why should Apple be given *any* credit for those? They are all FAILED
PRODUCTS. And Apple already knows it!
ASObjC and AS Libraries did *nothing* to grow the AppleScript market;
heck, even most existing AppleScripters don't use them. Had it not been
for Shane Stanley single-handedly doing all of Apple's user
documentation and support for them, the former would've sunk without
trace. As for the latter, the Automation team didn't even provide any
libraries for it—what sort of advertisment is that?!
As for JXA, that DOA POS failed so bad it (quite rightly) lost Sal
Soghoian his job. JavaScript is the #1 most popular language in the
world: tens of millions of casual and professional users, with a vast
global ecosystem of tools, code, documentation, and support, all there
for the exploiting! JXA should've been a cakewalk with at least 100,000
ready-made users by now, yet it'd be lucky to muster 100. Sal's
department shipped it half-baked and broken, then abandoned it and its
nascent user base the moment it was out the door! Disgraceful performance.
But the damn bugs (and not just AppleScript bugs) that haven't been fixed need some ATTENTION.
Unless they're security bugs, don't hold your breath: Mac Automation is
already dead; it just hasn't stopped twitching yet.
You think Apple disbanded the Automation team if they were going to
continue developing and enhancing it? Most or all of it will be moved to
maintenance mode if it hasn't already; it's just a question of how many
more years before it's no longer usable. Five years ago I predicted Mac
Automation had 5-10 years of life left in it on its then-current course.
Then Apple threw Sal an incredible opportunity by handing him
JavaScriptCore. Sal threw it down the drain. I threw Sal multiple
lifelines. He threw every single one back in my face. Folks excuse Sal
by saying he didn't get support from Apple; in fact he got more than
enough to deliver competent products and win new markets, and thus EARN
increased support and investment in future. That's how success works.
And, conversely, failure.
Now Apple believes the future of inter-app communication and integration
is programmer-only XPC and App Extensions, and the future of end-user
automation is Siri AI. Doesn't matter if you all think that's wrong,
because none of you can present anything better. I certainly cannot
blame them for deciding it's time to try something different, given how
atrociously their existing products have failed to perform.
Unlike everyone else, I saw this coming from years off, and was already
preparing a new vision and approach to end-user automation to present to
Apple. All I needed was a few days' assistance to fix SwiftAutomation's
documentation so Chris N. could begin showing it around inside Apple,
and create a proposal for my "SiriScript" language to pitch before
Easter. Not a lot to ask from Sal considering he still owes me the six
weeks of my time that he previously pissed down the drain on JXA. Alas,
Sal prefers to be a big diaper baby than suck up his ego and work with
the one person on the planet with a concrete plan and significant chunk
of the work to not only save User Automation but to make it relevant and
accessible to millions of iOS users as well—exactly the sort of radical
innovation Apple needs right now as Amazon and Google kick down its door!
Oh well.
WWDC17 is in three months; hopefully we'll get a marginally better idea
then of how slowly/quickly Mac Automation will wind down. I won't be
surprised if those of us who automate professionally are migrating
Windows two or three years from now anyway: as MS refocus on business
and Apple on consumer, I suspect the days of Apple as the pro graphics
platform of choice are coming to a close. Still, nothing like a new
platform and markets to conquer: after all, no-one automates desktops
better than us!
Regards,
has
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